


the man who was the sun

by boltlightning



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 13:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5377355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boltlightning/pseuds/boltlightning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following his discharge from the military, Roy seeks escape.</p><p>Post-Brotherhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the man who was the sun

The door to Hawkeye and Mustang’s joint hospital room doesn’t seem to close, at least not entirely. Someone is always visiting, someone is always exiting, someone is always dropping by for “a quick visit” and ending up staying far longer than they anticipated. Their nurse, a frightfully organized and severe woman named Marla, constantly gripes that they will never heal unless she locks the door to their room and bars access for a few days so they can rest. Hawkeye is still not up to full strength after losing a severe amount of blood, and Mustang adjusts slowly to his loss of vision as his damaged hands heal, as well.

Most of their comrades sneak in when their own nurses aren’t paying attention. The Elrics visit at least once a day, and Riza is constantly surprised at their tenacity. Edward’s automail leg is rusting and in desperate need of maintenance; Roy is always commenting on the smell of the weakening metal, and the two argue as though they both aren’t seriously injured. Alphonse, his body still weak and frail, is content to sit on the edge of Riza’s bed with his IV rolling after him and watch them bicker, sighing softly. The guards outside report that Izumi Curtis and her husband drop by frequently to inquire about their recovery. Olivier and Alex Armstrong visit regularly (“No amount of injury can keep the Armstrong clan down for long! We’ve been healing quickly for generations!” Alex claimed, flexing his bandaged shoulder as though it were proof of this) and have their family florist drop off an entire room full of flowers for them. When Riza describes them to Roy and details the several bouquets of hyacinths right next to his bed, he laughs so hard she’s afraid he’ll hurt himself.

Soon, they begin to run out of space in their tiny hospital room; there is no shortage of get-well-soon cards and gifts from Rebecca and the team, as well as soldiers and civilians alike who had caught word that they were currently hospitalized. Despite it all, despite Riza’s nasty scar and Roy’s blindness and the shape that the country is in, the colonel and his lieutenant find reasons to smile. Considering what they’d just been through, it makes this hospital stay almost enjoyable. “At least we have an excuse not to work,” he sighs one day, settling back against a fresh set of pillows. He laces his bandaged, broken hands behind his head and falls asleep within moments.

A matter of days before their tentative discharge date, Roy receives a letter.

It comes on crisp parchment, sealed in a thatched envelope with navy blue wax. The symbol is that of the Office of the Führer – the dragon of Amestris surrounded by four stars.

Roy’s fingers carefully trace the seal, glossing over the smooth surface of the wax. Abruptly, his thumb slides under it and splits it in two so the envelope can open. His grin is humorless as he hands the letter to Riza, who observes from the bed next to him.

“Führer Grumman knows I can’t read,” he says, and though his tone is haughty and sarcastic, Riza can tell he is actually mildly hurt. It’s not as though he asked to be blinded, and would have been glad to read his own mail if he could. “He could at least have had the decency to send a messenger.”

Her eyes skim the handwritten letter, and she is unaware that she falls into a panicking silence. In her peripherals, she sees Roy turn to her, frowning. Grumman’s slanted cursive delivers news that Riza is glad that Roy can’t read for himself. She closes the parchment and lets out a breath, slowly and shakily.

“Hawkeye?” He glances in her direction, though his glassy eyes don’t quite find her face. “Your breath is short. What does it say?”

She takes a second to steady her breathing and steel her voice, but her tone cracks as she says, “For your service and subsequent injury, you’ve been discharged from the military with full honor. There will be a gala for the formal dismissal in two weeks’ time.”

Her fingers have creased the letter at the edges, she is gripping it so tightly. With care, she folds the letter up, tucks it back in its envelope, and slides it over their shared bedside table to her colonel. His sightless eyes have turned back to his hands in his lap, still bandaged and recovering from their impalement.

Roy doesn’t say anything, and Riza has nothing to say either. For once, the silence that settles between them is uncomfortably heavy, like ash and pumice that buries entire cities. The hum of the hospital around them grows muted as the silence prolongs, both of them lost in the cacophony of their respective thoughts.

Eventually, Roy clears his throat. He grips his hands into fists and grimaces at the pain, but doesn’t unclench his muscles. “Well,” he croaks, “I can’t argue with orders,” and they fall into the ashen silence for the rest of the day.

* * *

She wakes before the sunrise the morning after with the immediate feeling that something is wrong. Something tugs behind her clavicle, something tightens her gut – she jolts awake and immediately looks over to the (ex?) colonel’s bed.

It is vacant.

Panic constricts her throat. She claps a hand to the wound on her neck and waits for her pulse to slow down before she even begins to absorb the situation. Breathing deeply, she lays out the situation for herself as simply as she can manage: _Colonel Mustang has just been discharged from the military. Colonel Mustang is blind and wounded and is trying to make himself worthwhile. Colonel Mustang is missing, despite the fact that he can’t see, and has barely spoken a word since he received the letter yesterday._

Lieutenant Hawkeye immediately assumes the worst, and doesn’t bother ringing for a nurse as she springs out of bed.

The guards to their room were nodding off, but show Riza that their weapons are tucked safely into their holsters when she rouses them. She speeds past nurses and visitors as the hospital begins to awaken and stir. She checks every window in every waiting room before circling back to their room, breathing hard, and leans against the doorway.

“Roy Mustang, you bastard,” she pants, but her eyes fall upon something she’d missed in her frantic sprint around the hospital. There is an entrance to the stairwell by their room, just around a corner – he could have easily felt his way out of the room and read the raised letters on the door with his fingers.

She climbs three flights of stairs before she is granted roof access, and practically collapses in relief when she sees him sitting on the ground by a vent.

Cross-legged, eyes closed, and breathing deeply, Roy looks more at peace than Riza has ever seen him. If she didn’t know better, she might think he was meditating, but he is leaning backwards and his hands prop him up in a rather un-meditative way. His head turns slightly towards her as she approaches. “I was wondering how long it would take you to find me.”

Her breathing is labored and rough, but he doesn’t comment on it this time. She sits next to him so her knee touches his and mutters, “You’re an idiot, you know that?” Her words fall flatly from her mouth, and are quickly whisked away by the summer breeze – she can’t bring herself to mean that.

They lapse into silence again, but this time it feels more like the silences in the office before all the trouble started. When Roy was upset, the entire office would fall dead silent; his rage was tangible, a distinct presence in the air that left her feeling as though she couldn’t breathe. The knots in her stomach wind tighter and tighter. Words unsaid make her feel uneasy, but she resists the urge to break this silence. She and Roy had been doing this for years – words unsaid had danced on the tip of her tongue since they returned from the war, since she had become his adjutant, since Hughes had died and the Elrics discovered long-buried secrets that shook the country to its foundation. Neither of them were strangers to the elephant in the room, and Roy has always appreciated the way she never tried to bullshit him with empty words, but this is the first time in her service to him that she’s felt unable to keep it in. Someone needs to say something, anything. She feels like she’s going to explode. But she is far less eloquent than he, and cannot even think of where to begin.

“I’m sorry to worry you,” he says finally, his voice quiet. He sets a hand on her knee, and she momentarily forgets to feel uncomfortable at his touch. “Can you walk me to the railing? My legs are falling asleep.” There’s a touch of humor in his voice, but he’s long since stopped expecting her to laugh at his charm.

She loops an arm around his back to help him stand. His hand aims for her hip, and brushes down her back in its path; briefly, Riza worries that he will feel her scars until she remembers that he put them there for her in the first place. The hospital overlooks Central Command; even from a distance, it is easy to see the damage Father inflicted upon the once-proud building. It has been several weeks and Riza still imagines smoke rising from the vaporized sector of the building.

Roy braces himself against the railing and looks out over a city he can’t see. “I’ve been thinking of how to say this all night,” he says. “We’ve been together a long time, Lieutenant – you know how I am with words.”

There was a reason Berthold Hawkeye had dubbed Roy _silvertongue_ – he had been raised to charm, and plucked words from the air with practiced, measured grace. Rarely did Roy Mustang enter a situation without a plan. Riza swallows, but doesn’t interrupt.

“I know I can’t be Führer now. I think it helps to say it aloud. _I can’t be Führer now._ ” He laughs to the city skyline, running a hand through his bangs. It was his one nervous habit that he never kicked – Riza had been watching him tug on his bangs since the day he showed up on her doorstep, eager to learn alchemy from her father. “I got so far. I was four ranks away. And by all the gods that are out there, I have you to thank for that. We’ve really been through hell.”

“That we have, sir,” she murmurs, unsure.

His lip twitches at _sir_ , but he doesn’t comment on it. “I couldn’t sleep, so I felt my way up here. And I sat here in the wind and mist and came to the conclusion that I _failed_. I promised Hughes I’d make it to the top. I plotted and I schemed. I was careful. And yet…”

He closes his eyes and lifts his face into the lazy sunrise that peers over Central City. Hues of amber and halcyon paint the shadows on his face, run their fingers through his hair; his skin glows golden in the display, though the rest of their surroundings remain steeped in shadow. Roy is beautiful, she is reminded, as he slowly inhales the morning mist and exhales clouds of steam.

“Hughes was the only one concerned with my happiness. And don’t give me that look,” he says before she can interrupt. Oh, they know each other too well. “I don’t need to tell you what you mean to me. It was necessary for us to be so professional. But Hughes…he made it a point to include me in his personal life after the war, as much as I objected. He forced me to think of life beyond the military. He was always hounding me about how great it was to get a wife, a family, how becoming a father changed him into a new man.”

He tugs at his bangs again. Nervously, the muscles in his jaw tighten. “I want that. I want to be a new man. It’s not that I want to delve straight into parenthood, no, but one major event shaped his life into something new, even after Ishval. He put it all behind him, and I want that. And this really seems like a good opportunity for me to start over, considering I’ve lost most everything. My vision, my job…”

“You haven’t lost me,” she objects quietly. Compared to his impassioned speech, her small, simple sentence seems to hang limply in the air. While Roy weaves beautiful rhetoric with his lips, Riza finds that a few humble words, when spoken correctly, can be just as effective.

Roy snorts, letting his hand fall back to the railing again. He turns his face towards her even if he can’t see her, and his eyes still find her face. The trademark sideways smirk seems softer in the gentle light of the sunrise. “Of course. I don’t like to think about losing you.”

His mouth suddenly hardens into a thin line, and the hand he reaches out to her shoulder is tentative, cautious. He passes his fingers over the bandage on her neck, his touch as light as a moth’s, and finally pauses when his hand cups her cheek. The message is received. _I almost lost you_ , his touch says, _and I will never lose you again_. The wound on her throat prickles in response. Words unspoken had served as their main form of communication during her months as a hostage, carried over from years of practice in the office. He never openly told her how he feels about her, and vice versa; it was implied, then confirmed, then assumed. No trust ran deeper than the trust between them.

So Riza doesn’t flinch when he cradles her jaw. Riza allows him to drag his calloused thumb across her cheekbone in deliberate strokes, and Riza allows herself to indulge herself in his presence. The entire time she had served as his adjutant, she had trained herself to have the grace to be uncomfortable at his touch so neither of them would make a mistake. She supposed there was no longer any need for that now. His skin is cold from his night on the roof, but his feather-like touch leaves trails of fire along her cheek.

“Riza,” he says. His mouth carefully shapes her name, as though he is savoring the feel of the syllables on his tongue. Though he speaks quietly, the word is the loudest thing she’s ever heard; normally, he precedes her first name with _Lieutenant_ and succeeds it with _Hawkeye_ , and hearing it without its end caps feels raw and exposed. She attributes the shiver that runs down her back to the cold morning breeze and definitely not the way Roy says her name. “Oh, Riza,” he repeats, “what will I do now?”

She thinks for a few seconds before responding quietly, “You keep moving forward, sir. That’s all you have ever done.”

His thumb finds the corner of her mouth. Before she can take another breath to steel her nerves, before he replies, Roy kisses her, quickly and softly. It’s nothing more than a quick peck on the lips, but he lingers there and murmurs, “No more ‘sirs’, Lieu–  _Riza_. Please.”

There is something desperate in his voice. His hand drops down to her waist, hovering uncertainly just above her skin. Her actions compose her answer to his request; she wraps her arms about his neck, presses her body closer to his, and boosts herself up onto the balls of her feet to kiss him more firmly. His hands and lips may be cold, but this certainly warms her to the tips of her toes, to say nothing of the heat that rushes to her face.

One hand holds her steady at the small of her back, the other rests on her waist. By the time they break, flushed, Roy’s hand has started trailing up her side underneath her hospital shirt and she’s tousled his hair as thoroughly as the wind did. She lowers herself back down so her feet are flat on the ground, and Roy’s forehead stays pressed to hers. They sway gently back and forth, tangled up in each other; she plays absently with the short hairs on the back of his neck, and he is content to keep his hands on her hips.

“So what will you do now, Roy?” she asks quietly, repeating his earlier words back at him. He hums a single note, his eyes still closed.

“For right now,” he eventually murmurs, voice husky and purring with pleasure, “I’m going to stand here with you, a beautiful woman who is no longer my subordinate, and enjoy this moment. Does that sound okay to you?”

She smiles. “It sounds just fine.”

By the time Marla and other concerned nurses find the two missing patients, the sun has risen and the mist dissipated. They listen to Marla’s screaming, panicked lecture without complaint and are respectful enough to look ashamed, but Riza has trouble concentrating on her words. Roy’s knuckles brush against hers as the veritable entourage of nurses march them back to their room, a silent request, and she responds by slipping her hand into his.

**Author's Note:**

> this assumes that marcoh used up all of his philosopher's stone on havoc's legs, leaving roy blinded. at least he's got the hawk's eye, right?
> 
> i actually have an idea of where this would go if i were to continue it, but i most likely won't. so to summarize: roy heads to xing to learn to read chi so he can at least sense where people are; mei uses what's left of ling's philosopher's stone to do what she can for roy's eyes, so he ends up having to wear dorky, bottle-cap thick glasses so he can at least keep reading; the state alchemy program becomes demilitarized so alchemists can continue their research so roy gets a research stipend with his pension; grumman realizes that roy's mind is still wicked sharp even if he's disabled, and hires him as a civilian diplomat in relations with xing and ishval. he marries riza and hayate has a lot of puppies. things are good.


End file.
